Creator
Lucas Ledwaba
Journalist and author of Broke & Broken - The Shameful Legacy of Gold Mining in South Africa.
Youth are not the future but the present
One of the commendable and often overlooked facts about the youth of 1976 and the Young Lions generation of the 1980s is that they did not wait for a Messiah to emerge from…
Have African leaders betrayed the dream of 1963?
Africa Day is generally marked as a day for celebration, a day to rejoice at the steps taken by previous generations to fight against and eliminate the effects of colonialism,…
Where are the unions and the ANC for suffering silicosis victims?
Recently, a proposed amendment announced by the Tshiamiso Trust — set up to disburse compensation — now threatens to shut out even more former mine-workers with the disease from…
Fruit of freedom withers under broken land deal
The death of Spokes Sithole at 108 exposes the broken promise of one of South Africa’s largest land restitution settlements, where freedom and land ownership have not translated…
State inaction normalises water poverty
In Limpopo’s villages, being waterless has become so normalised that people seem to have accepted that this is just how life should be — spending hours a day queuing to fill a…
Mahala’s biography restores dignity denied Can Themba for decades
Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi’ depicts the brutality and racism faced by the legendary editor of ‘Drum’ magazine
Poaching moves to cattle as SANParks communities plead for help
Villages that neighbour the Kruger National Park face the terrors of armed stock thieves and poachers who are involved in cross-border crime
Local elections: Water tops the agenda in Limpopo’s dry villages
People in the Fetakgomo Tubatse local municipality, who have to collect water from Motse River, are backing independent candidates because they’re tired of parties’ election…
Rural Limpopo women protest against Sefateng Chrome Mine
Women sleep outside in the cold to stop what they consider mineral theft by a mining company, with state collusion
‘I was hit by an adult bull buffalo’: An interview with Kruger National Park veterinary technologist Tebogo Manamela
Tebogo Manamela talks to Lucas Ledwaba about helping to preserve Africa’s heritage and the rewards of working with – and sometimes being attacked by – animals at the Kruger…
Non-delivery sparks citizens’ legal action in Eastern Cape
Fed-up residents and businesses are turning to the courts to get their local councils to take action on power outages, sewage overflows, unrepaired roads and other failures to…
The gold miners’ widows tell of daily battles for survival
Families will never forget how iphika took their fathers, brothers, husbands and breadwinners after they spent the best years of their lives digging up gold in the mines
State’s failure to act leaves Mpumalanga community at land grabbers’ mercy
Mpumalanga land claimants have been failed by state organs, whose officials are not helping them to remove land invaders, despite a court order
Special Economic Zones add hope in an era of unemployment
SEZs may be the financial injection the country needs as it battles to recover from the effects of the coronavirus and lockdowns
Volunteers on the Covid frontline
Community healthcare workers are at the coalface in the battle against Covid-19 – and by offering primary healthcare to the poor – but they can barely afford to replace their…